Belle of Louisville
Near Louisville, Kentucky
The Belle of Louisville is the oldest operating Mississippi River-style steamboat in the world. She was built in nineteen fourteen in Pittsburgh as a workhorse packet boat called the Idlewild, hauling passengers and freight across the inland river system. She came to Louisville in nineteen thirty-one, was renamed the Belle in nineteen sixty-two, and has been a Louisville icon ever since.
The vessel has a calliope, a steam-driven pipe organ whose shrieking notes can carry for miles, and has raced the Delta Queen in a famous annual steamboat race on the Ohio River that began in nineteen sixty-three. The Belle is a National Historic Landmark and a functioning reminder of when these rivers were highways and the sound of a steam whistle meant the world was coming to town.
